19 October 2006

Real Business magazine and the CBI are pleased to announce that Multimap, one of the world’s leading providers of online mapping and location-based services providers, has been shortlisted for the Company of the Year category of the prestigious Growing Business Awards 2006, now in its eighth year. The category’s shortist, sponsored by Alliance Corporate Risk Management, features only three other businesses (Pertemps Employment Alliance Ltd., Aquilaheywood and Wolfson Microelectronics) whose growth, ambition and quality of management have enabled them to out-perform their peers financially, while also delivering a compelling business strategy.

To make it to the shortlist stage of the Company of the Year category of these highly esteemed awards, companies had to prove that they had out-performed their peers in sales and profits growth; created new, quality jobs; developed and trained their people; delivered on an innovative and compelling business strategy; and launched, or successfully developed, their range of products and services. Matthew Rock, group editor of Caspian Publishing/Real Business said, “Competition for this year’s awards has been particularly tough, with a number of businesses meeting the requirements for each category. Multimap, with its impressive and sustained growth in terms of turnover, profit and staff, in addition to the high quality of the mapping and location-based services that it provides to the business community and consumers, is a very deserving candidate for this award, and we are delighted that our industry experts on the judging panel were of the same view when they shortlisted Multimap for the award!”

John McLaren-Stewart, chief executive of Alliance Corporate Risk Management, said: “On behalf of everyone here at Alliance Corporate Risk Management, I would like to congratulate Multimap on being shortlisted for the Company of the Year award, and wish the company the very best of luck with the final round of the awards. We are proud to sponsor an award that recognizes the achievements of successful UK businesses and the important part this plays in the economy as a whole.”

Commenting on the award, Jeff Kelisky, CEO of Multimap, said, “We are pleased to have been named as one of only four companies in the shortlist for the Company of the Year category of the Growing Business Awards. It’s gratifying for the whole team here to have their continued hard work and industry expertise recognized in this way!”

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 190 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK.

Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors. In 2006, it featured in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 league of fastest-growing unquoted UK technology companies for the fourth year running. Also in 2006, Multimap won the Innovation category of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise. In 2005, Red Herring named Multimap as one of the top 100 private companies in Europe, and the company featured in Deloitte Touche’s Technology Fast 50 league for London and Southern England.

About the CBI

The CBI is the UK's leading business organisation, speaking for some 240,000 businesses that together employ around a third of the private sector workforce.

Member companies, which decide all policy positions, include:

• 80 of the FTSE 100
• some 200,000 small and medium-size firms
• more than 20,000 manufacturers
• over 150 sectoral associations.

About Real Business

Published monthly and sent to over 43,000 owner-directors of companies in the UK. Real Business is the leading business magazine for today's fast growing companies.

About Alliance Corporate Risk Management

At Alliance Corporate Risk Management, we will look at your business in a way that you never have. We don’t just offer insurance policies, we analyse all manner of risks – identifying areas where your business is exposed and proposing solutions that are cost effective and comprehensive. Our expertise covers risk management, corporate insurance, health and safety assessment, disaster planning and information management, environmental, regulatory and legal risk – if it is about risk, it’s our business.

Our solution isn’t one size fits all – all companies are unique so we’ll do the thinking to ensure your company’s exposure to risk is managed. It’s all about helping you keep a competitive advantage.